THIS year’s Chelsea Flower Show from May 20-25 had a great deal to interest British Asian visitors, ranging from the WaterAid Garden to a stall dealing for the first time with Indian orchids.
King Charles, who toured Chelsea on Monday (20) with Queen Camilla, would have taken note of all the Royal Horticultural Society is doing to use gardens and gardening to heal mind and body.
For example, there was a garden with a wild meadow look put together by Bowel Research UK, which has the motto, “Let’s end bowel cancer and bowel disease.”
Eastern Eye was told the garden has edible plants and trees – Yellow Lupine, Sweet Cicely, Dill, Common Columbine, Sweet Violet, Autumn Olive, Elderberry, Field Maple and Common Hawthorn – that “offer a myriad of gut health and microbiome benefits”.
Cape Floral Kingdom from South Africa
The charity said: “We want the garden to inspire people to rewild their diets, their gardens and their relationship with the land. The planting takes inspiration from wild meadows, with a mix of ornamental grasses and edible perennials, offering a harvest for both people and wildlife.”
A theme running through Chelsea is the need to make the best use of rainwater.
At the WaterAid Garden, designed by landscape artist Tom Massey and architect Je Ahn, a steel structure was shaped so as to funnel the rainwater through hollow uprights into the ground.
Gurvinder Kaur Gregson, who has been the community, events, and education team lead at WaterAid since June 2019, shielded herself from the sun with an umbrella embedded with plants.
She said: “We are an international charity that works in 27 countries, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I am Punjabi myself. In Bangladesh, the salt water from the incoming sea is polluting the soil.”
Viswambharan Sarasan, senior scientist at Royal Botanic Gardens
According to WaterAid: “Almost one in ten people globally don’t have clean water close to home, and climate change is making it worse. A staggering 90 per cent of all natural disasters are water-related, with more frequent and extreme floods polluting water sources and droughts drying up springs. In the UK, we’re also feeling the effect of heat waves, drought and flooding. And as climate change continues, our clean water supply is becoming less reliable. The WaterAid Garden shows how innovation can help us all adapt to an unpredictable future.”
The garden was visited by the actress Indira Varma, who described the shortage of water globally as an injustice that “hits women and girls hardest as they often carry the burden of collecting water, which takes up valuable time that could be spent in school, earning an income, or with family”.
Key plants that have been chosen in the garden to suit varying conditions – from very wet to very dry – include the Alder tree, Water violet, Bogbean, Field maple and Red Yucca.
It is now a rule at Chelsea that after the show ends, the gardens have to find reincarnation elsewhere. The WaterAid Garden is expected to be moved to RHS Wisley. Nearby was the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery, where the meandering paths and the garden were designed to help patients. This garden will be moved to a plot near Leeds Hospital.
An organisation called Freedom from Torture designed a “sanctuary for survivors”. It had a communal cooking area with a handcrafted bread oven of the kind popular in the Middle East. It was surrounded by a sunken seating area.
Kew; Bowel Research garden; King Charles visits RHS Chelsea Flower Show on Monday (20)
The garden, containing a strawberry tree, a fig tree, a shrub rose, black cumin and French lavender, was where “horticultural therapy will help to heal and restore survivors of torture on their journey to recovery”. The plants “are survivors able to tolerate harsh conditions”.
There is also a garden made with salvaged and repurposed material by Children with Cancer UK.
The charity said: “Families affected by childhood cancer need a moment of reflection: this garden offers them respite from the unimaginable. Breeze-brushed Briza media (common quaking grass) adds to the restful, reflective atmosphere.”
This year’s Chelsea Flower Show has an international touch. The Golden Falls of Grenada displayed stunning plants from the Caribbean. There was a Cape Floral Kingdom from South Africa. And there was a Japanese garden designed by Paul Harris of Brookfield Plants of Ashford, Kent. His large Carp fish, flown in from Japan, are now his pets. They were certainly a draw at Chelsea. His garden had Bonsai and Hosta.
Gurvinder Kaur Gregson, events and education team lead at WaterAid
A section on orchids had representation from the UK, North America and India.
Viswambharan Sarasan, who is a senior scientist at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, told Eastern Eye: “In India, orchids are found in the Himalayas, in the Western Ghats and in Kerala. There are 1,200 spies of orchids in India, and 300 of them are found only in India. Orchids are found in the Andaman Islands, which is rich in diversity. We are working with our colleagues in India.”
Hybrids “are now used in weddings if you want to show a bit of class,” Sarasan quipped. “In terms of horticultural value, orchids are the most expensive plants.”
A note on “the incredible diversity of orchids in India” said: “India is an orchid paradise. Western states like Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir have fewer species, while eastern states such as Arunachal Pradesh and Assam are incredibly species-rich. Orchid diversity in India correlates strongly with rainfall and mountainous regions. However, deforestation and over-collection and traditional medicine have endangered many orchid species. Conservation efforts are essential to prevent the extinction of the species.”
Despite the serious issues tackled at Chelsea this year, the place was full of fragrant roses, clematis, alliums, marigolds, and spectacular chrysanthemums.
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
Her book ' Under Her Root'Facebook/ AA Chaudhuri
Her book 'The School Gates'Facebook/ AA Chaudhuri
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5